Integrated circuits (ICs) are used in most electronic devices, including desk top computers, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, smart phones, and other personal devices. The range of applications for these devices continues to grow, and with ever more applications available, usage grows also. Integrated circuits have become an integral part of the devices incorporating them. Integrated circuits have also become significantly more complex with multiple cores providing a wide variety of processing tools. A typical example is the system-on-chip (SoC) found in many smart phones. Many electronic devices use multiple complex integrated circuits or processors to perform the tasks directed by the wide variety of applications.
Increased usage of processors, often results in heat generated by the operation of the circuits within the chip. This heat may increase and may result in unsatisfactory device performance, loss of data, or failure. Failure within the device may be limited to one specific core that was heavily utilized, or may be more widespread with multiple cores affected.
Even when failure does not occur, performance may be degraded. In smart phones the SoC may have a problem tolerating temperatures that are near the high temperature limit. Near the limit SoC performance may suffer as the frequency may bounce between a high and a low frequency. Each integrated circuit is unique and varies in how severely it is affected by high temperatures and also in how quickly it cools down. Testing may be used to determine the high temperature behavior of ICs and may be used to set performance limits.
Testing ICs is frequently performed in large lots, as many devices may need to be delivered to electronic device manufacturers to continue production. In such cases, testing determines the IC device specifications for the entire lot. While each IC may be unique, it is not feasible to individually determine and specify operating characteristics, as the lot size may be too large. In practice, this means that the behavior of the worst tested device in the lot determines the thermal benchmarks for the entire device population.
Using the worst performing device as a benchmark may save time, but may result in undervaluing the performance of the ICs, and result in performance that is not optimum. There is a need in the art to provide device specific thermal mitigation to avoid over-current, high power, or uncontrolled thermal behavior.